Fear damages decision-making more than any other emotion.
Forget your biases. Forget love. Forget greed.
It’s the fear of being wrong.
Those fear feelings aren't nice.
Consider the moment a thumping sensation rises from your chest. Your blood races to the skin, creating little bubbles on your forehead which gravity pulls down your face. The sensations cause you to fidget as you generate a thousand questions, each one pouring forth as rapidly as tracer fire from a machine gun.
Whether you face you fear or not, hindsight will laugh at you.
It will ridicule you for the uncomfortableness you felt. Of course, other biases won't remind you how to manage your feelings the next time a tough decision arises.
Unfortunately, most of us experience this fear of being wrong. The responsibility to be right can be overwhelming. Problems surface everywhere, but commonly these are:
- Indecision
- More uncertainty
- Second-order effects
The fear of being wrong forces us to freeze. In freezing, the only outcome is indecision. Then the decision falls to forces outside of your control.
Not making a decision only breeds more uncertainty. When we freeze, we begin to sacrifice any control to entropy.
Actions have consequences. Fear stops you from thinking about the second-order effects your choice will have.
Emotions throttle our rational minds. What we need is a simpler, easier way to dampen the rising tide of fear. It turns out there are 3 different approaches you can take to help you overcome the fear of being wrong.